Aries“Fighting” – the title alone makes it unmistakably clear: this is about the Aries-subject par excellence. A young street hawker with a great talent for fighting is discovered by a clever wheeler dealer and introduced to New York's underground world of street fighting – it
is the old tale about a fighter, who would not at any price allow himself to
lose. This story has often been told in movies, but yet it can still be fun
to see incorruptible and pure Aries-energy occupied with its favorite pastime...

Taurus
It is the particular abilities and talents we are endowed with as well
as the things or people we appreciate and love, that ascertain our identity
and make us feel secure – one of Taurus' pivotal denotations. In “Julie & Julia” we
watch two women discovering their talents and searching for that certainty
with great taste and a lot of perseverance. One of them, Julia Child
(sensuous and earthy, played by Meryl Streep) in the early sixties brings
French cuisine into American homes, in 2002 the other one, Julie Powell,
cooks her way through Julia's recipes and reports about it in her blog
(thus building a bridge to following Gemini)...

Gemini“The
Taking of Pelham 123” – a wordy title and a movie which along
with the popular Aries-motif of a race against time focuses on the criminals'
cleverly plotted modus operandi and the mental duel between the two antagonists
and thus gets a lot of Gemini-quality. John Travolta as the equally eloquent
and brutal gangster with a Wall Street past and Denzel Washington as the
quick thinking transit executive negotiate hostages, time and money transfers
in a movie that might be a bit superfluous, but has it's strong moments,
when the ordinariness of daily life (e.g. a hero's wife's request to bring
some milk on his way home) slows down the speeding cinematography.

Cancer
A grumpy old man feels ousted from “his America” and decides
to pursue an old dream and go on a trip – without leaving his home,
which he converts into a flying object by a myriad of balloons. Involuntarily
a little boy scout with a sunny disposition accompanies him as a stowaway,
since his search for adventures and good deeds brought him to the flying
house. Of course he befriends the misanthrope. The animated film “Up” is
a lovable modern fairy tale about dreams, emotional bonds and human strengths
and weaknesses.

LeoBased
on Eliot Tiber’s memoirs – he's the man who made the greatest
rock festival in the history of music possible – Ang Lee’s
latest, humorous film “Taking Woodstock” is dedicated to
this extraordinary event’s local background and atmospherically
emphasizes joy and high spirits in a story that touches on the Aquarius-topic
of oddity as well as on the Leo-motifs of creative self-expression, self-fulfillment
and the love for music and happy partying.

Virgo
Margarete von Trotta’s biography of belatedly acknowledged naturopathic
healer and mystic, “Vision – Aus dem Leben der Hildegard von
Bingen” (no official English title, literal translation: “Vision – From
the life of Hildegard von Bingen”) is a film, which with its depiction
of the hard-working and humble life in convents expresses the energy of
the Virgo-Pisces-axis and thereby includes the ambivalence between individual
and revolutionary vision (“it is our divine right to rule and decide
for ourselves” – quoted from the trailer) and accustomed,
obedient traditionalism, that is mirrored in the recent opposition between
Saturn
in Virgo and Uranus in Pisces. The character of Hildegard von Bingen
also provides a rare cinematic image of the Vesta-archetype with its
signature
features of autonomy, the inner fire, the bond with nature etc.

Libra Because of a genetic
anomaly Henry De Tamble keeps traveling through time involuntarily. His
abrupt and unpredictable appearing and disappearing – corresponding
Uranus in Pisces – complicates his relationship with Clare, who was
a child, when she met him for the first time and whose life has been determined
by his time travels and her love for him ever since. “The Time Traveler’s
Wife” is a Libra-typical romantic and charming story of love and
relationship with lots of emotion (emphasizing Cancer) and an unusual impediment,
which could also be read as a metaphor for running from commitment or the
estrangement in love (Uranus in Pisces!).

Scorpio
Lars von Trier’s scandalous new film “Antichrist” is
a psychological tour de force. After their baby son had died in a horrible
accident, a psychotherapist attempts a kind of vivisection on his wife’s
soul by forcing her to confront her greatest fears and thus triggers a
furious and bloody fight, which crosses all boundaries and literally cuts
to their bones. Along with the internal Scorpio-hell, the outer scenery – an
isolated cabin in the woods, with the morbidly humorous name “Eden”,
as well as the gloomy and eerie imagery – largely represents Capricorn-quality.
A more graphic depiction of the current Pluto in Capricorn hasn’t
been in theatres a lot until now…

Sagittarius With
its story about jewish high jumper Gretel Bergmann and her intersexual
rival Marie Ketteler the German film “Berlin 36” combines several
complex issues that belong to Sagittarius: A critical look on discrimination,
intolerance and narrow-mindedness, the overcoming of all that through mental
generosity, the physical equivalent of broadening intellectual horizons
is also found in the ambitious athletic competition. But there's also the
racial megalomania of a “Third Reich” that pursues universal
power. Moreover, the beginning and intention of the Olympic Games once
was a religious ritual dedicated to godfather Zeus and the quest for sublime
knowledge, expressing pure Sagittarius-energy.

Capricorn
The South African drama “Disgrace” focuses on the consequences
radical changes in social power relations have and the ways of dealing
with them. In an adaptation of J.M. Coetzees award-winning novel John
Malkovich portrays the cynical professor of literature David Lurie, an
intellectual with an openly egotistical attitude towards women. Malkovich's
masterful mannerisms imbue the character with Libra- and Aquarius-qualities.
After a scandal about an affair with a student Lurie quits and changes
the university campus for his daughter’s farm, where by dramatic
events he is forced to deal with the Capricorn-issues of guilt and atonement,
moral and responsibility.

Aquarius Not
only because of their technical gimmicks Science-fiction movies mostly belong
to Aquarius, but also because they deal with the topic of being alien, being
different and highlight the relations between individual and community. “District
9” is about the marginalization and discrimination of Aliens, who were
forced to land on earth because of some technical problems in their ship many
years ago. Our attitudes toward refugees are not accidentally mirrored in
this film. Yet there is also a sentimental father-son-plot and combined with
the aliens longing for their home planet - this adds some qualities of the
Cancer-Capricorn-axis…

Pisces
The hypnotic rhythms and the often dreamy cinematography of his films made
Wong Kar-wei one of the most renowned directors of Hongkong-cinema. Varying
the genre of Chinese Martial Arts epos, “Ashes of Time: Redux” (“Dung
che sai duk”) in its story covers a range of topics from sword fighting
to schizophrenia (Aries to Pisces), yet the meditative atmosphere, the
images that sometimes even appear abstract and the emphasis on excessive,
ecstatic visuals create the Pisces-like quality of this film, that was
shot in 1994 and now revised.

Vesna Ivkovic

Vesna
Ivkovic studied literature and linguistics, sociology, philosophy
and history and as well took a profound interest in psychology, mythology
and different belief systems. Along the way she also explored various
paths of body awareness such as the martial arts of Kung Fu, Dance,
Yoga, Qi Gong and several other methods of body work and motion arts.
In 1993 she discovered astrology as an instrument of knowledge and
graduated
in 2004 in Markus Jehle's and Petra Niehaus' master class at the
Astrology Center Berlin. You can find out more about the author and
her work on
her own website www.astrosemiotics.de

The Cinemascope is meant to give an overview of current movies and their main themes from an astrosemiotical perspective (i.e.: regarding film as semiotic system and translating it into the astrological semiotic system). A well made movie not only has a story and a certain theme, it also provides a special atmosphere, a certain feeling and it draws us into its very own world. This basic quality that is contrived through characters, plot, setting and many other components also translates into one or more astrological principles. Quite simply: a fast-paced action-flick confronts us with plain Aries energy, a horror-movie evokes Scorpio-like abysmal depths and fears etc. We step out of the theatre and – if the film succeeded in sucking us in – find ourselves dwelling on and engaging in that special energetic quality.

AstroWiki
by Astrodienst is a free encyclopedia of astrology. It collects the knowledge
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cadre consists of two astrological lexica.

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